Jenn Nichols

Faculty Activism and AAUP Principles Shine at the 2009 Summer Institute

Despite the grim economic times academia faces, the mood was as sunny as the weather when two hundred faculty members, academic professionals, graduate students, and AAUP leaders descended upon Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, this July for the AAUP’s annual Summer Institute.

Pay Raises for Nebraska Faculty Upheld

Faculty at the University of Nebraska at Omaha received good news this month when Nebraska’s Commission on Industrial Relations upheld an arbitrator’s decision to award 3.8 percent annual pay raises for the next two years to faculty in the AAUP collective bargaining chapter there. The commission also upheld an increase in employer-paid life-insurance benefits. The university’s board of regents had appealed the arbitrator’s decision, and the administration had proposed raises of 2.9 percent and 2.5 percent in the next two years.

Contract Gains for Part-Time Chapter

The Suffolk Affiliated Faculty (SAF-AAUP) part-time faculty chapter signed its first contract with Suffolk University this June, bringing a welcome conclusion to three-year-long negotiations. The chapter has much cause to celebrate. The Suffolk administration acceded to part-time faculty members’ demands that they be compensated for extra classroom time that was a consequence of a course-credit restructuring plan; this resulted in 30 to 45 percent pay raises between 2007 and 2010, with annual increases of 3.5 percent in subsequent years.

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